A theory on ‘separating out’ and ‘separating off’

I have previously claimed that Anaximander held that the world comes from the Unlimited, in a process resembling or describable as biological reproduction¹²⁰, further that the image of opposites in perfect balance maintaining the world can not be a correct one; rather the opposites (or, possibly, all the content of the world, including the opposites) comes from the Unlimited and into the world, are then followed by a period of injustices between the

opposites, which ends in, well, the end of the world. When the time is right (i.e. ‘according to the assessment of Time’) the Unlimited will create another world, and so forth.

My interpretation of the relationship of the Unlimited to the present world

(independent of whether this is the only world or not) depends on there being two separate modi operandi of the Unlimited: (1) creation of that which is productive of the hot and the cold, the γόνιμον, that further creates the world; and (2) generation of things in the world, including opposites, that will ensure the sustained (though not eternal) existence of and continued change in the world.

The task of (1) is seen in Pseudo-Plutarch Stomateis 2 = KRS 121 where it is reported that “…that which is productive of the hot and cold was separated off (ἀποκριθῆναι) from the eternal at the coming-to-be of this world”¹²¹; the arguments for action (2) is seen in Aristotle Physics III.4, 203b15 = KRS 106: “Belief in infinity would result (…) because only so would generation and destruction not fail, if there were an infinite source from which that which is coming-to-be is derived”. Admittedly this is a naïve view, that leaves open great explanatory gaps in reference to how exactly this unlimited supply of material is going to provide the world with a steady supply of matter, but that does not mean that Anaximander would not hold such a belief, or that it is a failed explanation. Aristotle later argues against the necessity of an infinite source (Physics III.8, 208a5 ff), but in doing so he presents his own critique of his predecessors, and the situation is resolved by Aristotle’s own solution that “it is possible for the destruction of one thing to be the generation of the other” (Physics III.8, 208a8 = KRS107). In KRS’ view this is in fact exactly what Anaximander meant; “that there is no wastage: opposed substances make retribution to each other for their encroachments.

Provided the balance is maintained, all change in the developed world takes place between the same original quantity of separate, opposed substances.” (KRS 2004:114-115).

120 Whether this resemblance is metaphorically intended or not, is difficult to tell. Anaximander might very well have conceived of all generation of life as actually resembling that of biological entities, but he might also well have intended nothing but a recognizable allegory in order to further the explanatory strength of his cosmogony.

121 Originally formulated “…that which is productive from the eternal of hot and cold was separated off at the coming-to-be of this world”

When KRS thus interpret Aristotle’s critique of Anaximander they firstly assume there to be something inconsistent or non-combinable between the statements of KRS 105¹²² and KRS 106¹²³, which I believe there is not; the fragments simply state different reasons for the existence of the Unlimited. To understand that the infinity of one primary element would ensure the suppression of all opposed elements is perfectly compatible with the idea of the infinity of the primary element in order to provide the world with an eternal supply of matter, in fact, they seem to together to form an argument concerning the nature of the Unlimited:

that which is the ἀρχή has to be unlimited spatially and temporally, and that means that it cannot be identified with any of the primary elements. Dancy (1989) provides excellent argumentation for the claim that Anaximander had more than one reason for stating the existence of the Unlimited, and that its many attributes (infinity in time, infinity in space, undifferentiated internally) were attributed to it as deductions in an argument and not simply as what naturally followed from naming the originating element ‘τό ἄρειρον’. Secondly, KRS take Aristotle’s objection against Anaximander’s reasoning to be in reality exactly that which Anaximander argued (KRS ibid.), thus claiming Aristotle had mistaken the answer that Anaximander gave for its exact opposite. Aristotle’s own solution is thus made into

Anaximander’s solution by KRS, and Anaximander’s solution (if we grant that Aristotle reported accurately on Anaximander in this case) is turned into some wholly unfounded statement about Anaximander. Yet KRS informs that both Aëtius (Placita 1.3.3 = DK12 A4) and Simplicius (de Caelo 615.15 = DK A17) repeat this allegedly unfounded reason for stating the undifferentiated nature of the Unlimited, namely that the coming-to-be in the world needs an unlimited supply of matter. Clearly, then, this was at the least one of the reasons named by Theophrastus as Anaximander’s ground for statements about the nature of the Unlimited.

There is further the sustained puzzlement of how the opposites are generated from the Unlimited. This question is in itself interesting, as a specification of Anaximander’s

cosmogony, and extra so for this here essay, as I am trying to map out how the instantiations of causal relations in Anaximander’ view. But for the question at hand, whether or not the

122 “For there are some people who make what is beside the elements the infinite, and not air or water, so that the rest be not destroyed by their infinite substance; for the elements are opposed to each other (…) and if one of those were infinite the rest would already have been destroyed. But, as it is, they say that the infinite is different from these, and that they come into being from it.” (Aristotle, Physics III.5, 204b22 = KRS 105).

123 “Belief in infinity would result (…) because only so would generation and destruction not fail, if there were an infinite source from which that which is coming-to-be is derived.” (Aristotle, Physics III.4, 203b15 = KRS 106)

Unlimited has two main modi operandi, it has provided further possibility of investigation to which I would suggest an answer.

Some of the doxographers have stated that in Anaximander the opposites were

‘separated out’, ἐκκρίνεσθαι, from the Unlimited, while others have stated that the opposites were ‘separated off’, ἀποκριθῆναι, and this semantic difference has generated different interpretations on the nature of the Unlimited. For if the opposites are ‘separated out’ directly from the Unlimited the Unlimited must contain the opposites in their opposed forms and thus be a mixture of opposites, or heterogeneous. One would assume that the other part of the dichotomy equates that the Unlimited is homogeneous. But if the opposites are ‘separated off’

from the Unlimited that means, or so I believe, that any part of the Unlimited could be isolated and parted from the ‘main mass’ (if we allow this type of language about something eternal in size and internally undifferentiated) and the result, that which is ‘separated off’, would be all of the opposites, or at least the main two opposites, the hot and the cold. In that case, how could the Unlimited be homogeneous? If the Unlimited is at every point a perfect fusion of ‘the hot’ and ‘the cold’ so that no matter what part one isolated off one would be guaranteed the same content in that part, then and only then is the Unlimited homogeneous.

Hence homogeneous means fusion of indistinguishables.

KRS (2004:130) argues that “if the opposites arose directly from the Indefinite by being separated off, as Simplicius states in Physics 24, 21 then the Indefinite was being unconsciously treated as unhomogeneous; for separation off cannot simply imply the isolation of one part of the Indefinite, that part which becomes the world; it implies this and some change in the isolated part”. This change, KRS suggests, may be not the appearance of

opposites, but the appearance of that which is productive of the opposites, which would imply that the Unlimited contained embryos or sperms. According to KRS this must mean that the Unlimited is heterogeneous, but I fail to see why this must be so. For why is it impossible that the Unlimited is homogeneous and that some part of it is capable of change once separated off from the main mass? Why should change in the separated part at all indicate

heterogeneousness? The change could simply be the indistinguishables changing into

distinguishables. Another more important objectionable point in the argument of KRS is that they equate ‘the opposites’ with ‘the world’. Surely there are great explanatory difficulties with the Unlimited directly separating off the world. But that is not what Simplicius in the referred text says; he says that “he [Anaximander] produces coming-to-be not through the alteration of the element, but by the separation off of the opposites…” (Simplicius Physics 24, 12 = KRS 119, my emphasis).

My main point in this chapter is nevertheless this: I suggest (and I suspect my reader already have seen where I am going with this) that the two different terms for the generation of the opposites and the two mechanisms or types of labour that the Unlimited performs, what I have called the modi operandi of the Unlimited, fit neatly (more or less) together. I suggest that the Unlimited separates off, ἀπόκρισις, “that which is capable of generating the hot and the cold at the creation of this here world”; and that it later, after the world has come into existence, separates out, ἐκκρίνουσι, the things in the world, including the opposites, that generates and powers the change and destruction and coming-to-be in the world. The latter suggests that the Unlimited is a mixture or fusion of the opposites or the potentialities of the opposites, and of these potentialities there is not much to be said, or can be said, for they are without attributes, they are too ontologically primal for description. This fits well with the description of the Unlimited as ‘undifferentiated’. When the potentialities of the opposites are separated out they truly become opposites, with opposite powers capable of committing ‘injustice’ and ‘justice’

towards each other¹²⁴.

Why, then, does not the Unlimited generate both the hot and the cold at the generation of the world and the opposites that fuel change in the world, by the same principle? Why must the one be ‘separated off’ and the other ‘separated from’? If we follow previous reasoning presented in this essay it is not a given that it is ‘opposites’ that are generated by the Unlimited, rather there are ‘things in the world’¹²⁵, including those that embody powers of opposition, that are generated into the world in order to sustain it. These, then, will be different from the opposites that created (or creates) the world (or worlds). If Anaximander did not, as is often suggested, abstract out the opposing forces instantiated in the forces of nature into ‘the hot’ and ‘the cold’ but rather made reference to ‘mist’ and ‘fire’ (ref), that would mean he in description and thought did not abandon the concrete manifestations of natural phenomena and powers for the sake of abstracted general principles. When describing the creation of the world he conjured up great rings of mist and fire, and those primeval rings of mist and fire that ultimately created both the world and the heavenly bodies has no place within the developed world. Hence there must be some difference in these two modes of generation by the Unlimited.

124 See Vlastos (1947 part V, B) for details of this change in the opposites’ ontological status and how it affects

‘justice’ and ‘injustice’.

125 “And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens…”

(Simplicius Physics 24, 13 = DK12 A9 = KRS 101A, my emphasis). The opposites are nowhere mentioned in the extant fragment, and that the fragment indicates that the world consists of opposites (as claimed in KRS 2004:130) is entirely subject to the eye of the beholder.

Why, then, is that which is productive, the γόνιμον, ‘separated off’, ἀποκριθῆναι, and the things in the world including opposites ‘separated out’, ἐκκρίνεσθαι? If the Unlimited is to create fully developed worlds, or heavens, or even seeds that ultimately will grow into worlds, it has to do so by ‘separation off’ and not ‘separation out’, because the Unlimited can not consist of or contain undifferentiated worlds or heavens or seeds even (for what would they be like, or how should they be possible; what is an undifferentiated world?) but it can contain undifferentiated opposites. It is because the opposites (whether or not Anaximander used this category as an abstraction of physical phenomena into their bare principles) are fundamental, primal bodies, and that substance and qualities are both considered matter of some sort, that ‘the opposites’ can be mixed into something that is too primal and to

intermediate¹²⁶ too be differentiated in a mixture, that the mixture can be homogeneous and yet contain opposites¹²⁷. Theophrastus interprets Anaximander as claiming the Unlimited both as a mixture and a single body¹²⁸, which combines neatly with the above. The developed worlds on the other hand are not primal bodies, and would not be subject to unrecognizable enmeshment into each other, and could therefore not be separated directly ‘out’, there has to be some intermediate state of development – and that is the seed¹²⁹, which is ‘separated off’.

If we follow KRS’ claim that ‘separation off’ implies separation and a change in what is separated (notwithstanding KRS’ claim about the nature of the Unlimited), the change they speak of, then, would be the change of the gonimon into fire and mist (or ‘hot’ and ‘cold’).

126 And here I would like to make the suggestion that Aristotle’s interpretation of the apeiron as ‘an intermediate substance’ (in Physics III.4, 203a16; Physics I.4, 187a12; de Gen. et Corr. II.5, 332a19) has at least some of its roots; see KRS (2004:109-113) for an attack of the idea that Anaximander called the Unlimited ‘intermediate’.

127 cf. Guthrie (1977:86-87)

128 According to McDiarmid (1970:198) he does this by claiming that Anaximander (together with Anaxagoras and Empedocles) derived plurality by separating the inherent contraries from their material principle. This principle he designates both as a mixture and as the One. He can do so because he assumes that the mixture of Anaximander is “in fact not a mixture but a homogeneous body in which the four simple bodies are qualitatively suspended through the alteration of each in the direction of its opposite. (…) by the inherence of these contraries in the One he means the potential inherence of the contraries in his chemical mixture; and by separation he means the actualization of these potential contraries”. McDiarmid sums it up (1970:199): “Theophrastus may with indifference speak of it now as a unity and now as a plurality, since regardless of the term he uses the result is the same: the Infinite is a unified substratum for alteration, and separation from the Infinite is simply that alteration”. The Unlimited is thus a plurality without being a mechanical mixture.

129 It could also, as KRS (2004: 130) suggests, be ‘a vortex’, as some doxographers have spoken of, but the theory that Anaximander claimed the existence of vortex or swirl has largely been abandoned (KRS 2004:128).

Another theory referred to by KRS is that of Vlastos’ (1947:171 n140) where the γόνιμον is a process, namely the process of separating the hot and the cold from each other after their being perfectly blended in the

Unlimited.

This solution and interpretation I have suggested is a rather different one from those strategies which are ordinarily endeavoured¹³⁰. The divide ‘separated out’ – ‘separated off’ is sometimes outright ignored¹³¹, and the term ἐκκρίνω read as genuine Anaximandrean;

alternatively the use of this verb in Anaximander is ascribed to Aristotle¹³², as Aristotle “was prone to read his own simple bodies, and two pairs of basic opposites, into everything, and he perverted Anaximander by substituting separating out for separating off from the Indefinite, thus making this into a mixture of opposites”¹³³. An investigation of the frequency of the different phrases shows that it is indeed only Aristotle that uses the phrase ‘separated out’¹³⁴. Further, ‘separated off’, ἀποκρίνο, is often considered genuine Theophrastean. For these reasons KRS (ibid.) says that “it seems quite likely that this [ἐκκρίνεσθαι] is a distortion of ἀποκρίνεσθαι“, and further that we have no right to assume as Aristotle did that the

Unlimited for Anaximander was a mixture¹³⁵. Is the dual use of separation-verbs, then, a case of Aristotle simply replacing one term for another, the other term meaning roughly the same but better suited Aristotle’s interpretation?

130 The closest I have encountered is Hölscher (1970:291) who draws attention to the fact that “What ‘separates’

is not the opposites but the gonimon. This separation is not a splitting but a separating off. (…) ‘To be separated off’ (…) may be taken as Anaximandrean”.

131 e.g. Guthrie (1977:77, my emphasis): “The statement in Simplicius’ explanation that Anaximander accounts for the origin of things ‘by a separation of the opposites’, etc., depends no doubt on Aristotle, who writes (Physics 1.4, 187a20): ‘Others teach that the opposites are in the one and are separated out, as Anaximander says’”. We see here how the two forms of separating are equated, as the one count as evidence of the other.

132 e.g. Hölscher (1970:294): “Aristotle clearly twisted Anaximander’s concept of apokrisis by putting it under his rubric of ekkrisis”.

133 KRS 2004:129, referring to the explanation offered by U. Hölscher 1953, Hermes 81, 258 ff.

134 The instantiations of ἀποκρίνο and ἐκκρίνω in the doxography on Anaximander are as follows:

Aristotle Physics A4, 187a20 = KRS 104; 118

“…the opposites are separated out from the One, being present in it…”: ἐκκρίνεσθαι

“…these, too, separate out the rest from the mixture”: ἐκκρίνουσι

Simplicius Physics 24,21 = KRS 119

“…but separation of the opposites through the eternal motion…”: ἀποκρινομένων

Pseudo-Plutarch Stromateis 2 = KRS 101C

“…from which the heavens are separated off, and in general all the worlds…”: ἀποκεκρίσθαι

Ibid., = KRS 121

“…that which is productive of the hot and the cold was separated off…”: ἀποκριθῆναι

Hippolytus Refutation 1.6.4-5 = KRS 125

“…a circle of fire separated off from the fire in the world…”: ἀποκριθέντα

Hippolytus Refutation 1.6.7 = KRS 129

“… the finest vapours of air are separated off…”: ἀποκρινομένων

135 As previously shown, there is a sense that we can assume that the Unlimited is a mixture, and that is in the sense of it being both a mixture and a homogeneous substance.

Let us then look at the use of the two verbs of separation in the doxographical tradition. We remind ourselves that what we are looking for is evidence that ἀποκρίνο was used to express ‘separating off’ the γόνιμον, or simply the world; and that ἐκκρίνω was used to express ‘separating out’ the opposites, or the things in the world.

(i) We see that (see note 134) Aristotle uses ἐκκρίνεσθαι for the process of generating things in the world, including opposites. Aristotle does not mention the γόνιμον or the generation of this world (at least not in Physics book II) and subsequently does not use the word ἀποκρίνο. (ii) Pseudo-Plutarch uses the term ἀποκρίνο in reference to the γόνιμον at the creation of the world, as well as for the separating off of the heavens from the Unlimited.

This last use might well be shorthand for the entire cosmological process involving the seed and the fire and mist from it, and is then simply a repetition of the first use, but if not, it is just as compatible with my theory about the uses of the separation-verbs. (iii) Hippolytus uses

This last use might well be shorthand for the entire cosmological process involving the seed and the fire and mist from it, and is then simply a repetition of the first use, but if not, it is just as compatible with my theory about the uses of the separation-verbs. (iii) Hippolytus uses

In document The notion of cause in Anaximander (sider 69-77)